A highly persuasive film about how we should be wary of film’s power to persuade, Theo Anthony’s discursive and disturbing “All Light, Everywhere” is a superb if sinister example of how the outwardly modest essay format can deploy arguments that challenge us to unpick our most basic assumptions. Here, it’s the idea that a thing and its recorded image can never have a 1:1 relationship: It’s not just that our eyes deceive us, it’s that we’re conditioned to accept the representations of those deceptions as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God.
At the exact point where the optic nerve connects to the eye, there is a blind spot. This is likened, in the onscreen titles that carry much of the film’s factual information, to the world outside the frame of an image. It’s a...
At the exact point where the optic nerve connects to the eye, there is a blind spot. This is likened, in the onscreen titles that carry much of the film’s factual information, to the world outside the frame of an image. It’s a...
- 4/21/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Seemingly birthed from some kind of virtuosic computer algorithm or beamed directly from outer space, Theo Anthony’s debut feature Rat Film was a peculiarly engaging, wholly fascinating documentary. Using the population of rats to chart the history of classism and systemic racism throughout Baltimore over decades, it heralded an original new voice in nonfiction filmmaking. When it comes to his follow-up All Light, Everywhere, Anthony casts a wider focus while still retaining the same unique vision as he explores how technological breakthroughs (and pitfalls) in filmmaking have reverberated throughout history to both embolden and trick our perceptions of perspective. To thread these strands and see its modern-day effects, the majority of the film looks at the engineering behind police body cameras, and the extensive use of those devices and other surveillance equipment to support officers in cases where evidence might otherwise come down to only verbal testimonies.
More sprawling...
More sprawling...
- 1/31/2021
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
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